What the Sign?!??
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This sign has appeared in the local area recently. Anyone want to guess what it means?Maybe Modem noise? Perhaps a command to stop the modem spewing noise? I don't know, all my modem would do is tell me "Syntax error."
Maybe it's a perl script?
For those boring people that need the actual meaning....
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<font color="#ffffff">It points to a state government facility where you will find a research station under the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, as well as offices of the department of Natural Resources and Water</font>
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Wasn't that strange after all? Clear to everybody!
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It's a sign of the apocalypse! We're all going to die! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!
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In Virginia, there's a sign on I-95 for something like "Def Sup Ctr - Def Ctr" or something like that.
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Good thing that they condensed that text down to 6 letters. Looking at the area, there's just not the room for a full-sized sign that actually tells you something useful!
On the subject of signs, this is probably the opposite. Something that they *should* have given a cryptic name, but instead made it too obvious:
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@RayS said:
On the subject of signs, this is probably the opposite. Something that they should have given a cryptic name, but instead made it too obvious:
This road sign is from England, where the brown background on the sign indicates a tourist attraction. The Secret Nuclear Bunker is now a museum, and has hosted LAN parties.
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It get's worse, in the netherlands, the civil servants in charge of road signs have discovered blank ones and letter stickers. The effect: instead of the universally readable signs that everyone knows, we get huge, poorly worded and misspelled signs with letters that are too small to read from a distance.
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They have things called "Townships" in New Jersey. I don't know what they are (are they like spaceships?). When we went to New Jersey we kept seeing signs that said things like:
EDISON TWP
Lots of corny conversation ensued. "Did Edison twip here?"
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I think they're there to balance out the CYNs in California.
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@salsadanca said:
This road sign is from England, where the brown background on the sign indicates a tourist attraction. The Secret Nuclear Bunker is now a museum, and has hosted LAN parties.
I figured as much, but never actually bothered to research it because I knew that it'd ruin the joke. Thanks for killing the magic for me. :-)
If I'm ever driving along the A128 I hope I never see the sign, because I'd just start laughing and crash.
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I like the American system where it's possible to travel south on north road. You get signs like "Sth N Rd" or "North Road South." I first noticed this when it took an hour in a taxi to get from JFK Airport to my hotel that was 2 miles from the airport. The taxi driver was very apologetic and turned the meter off after the first 15 minutes driving in circles.
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LOL!
I know there are a few places where weirdness happens as a result of a road bending, so the southbound carriageway is actually east-west or suchlike. This can lead to right-angle intersections between two roads with north and southbound or similar. I think somewhere in the US there's also a road where the carriageways reverse, putting the other side to your right.
Fortunately when the UK's M25 was built they were sensible enough to use clockwise and anticlockwise.
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There's a stretch of highway in Massachusetts where you're going south on I-95 and north on Route 3 at the same. The direction you're actually going in is west-southwest.
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Ah yes I remember that now. <hackneyed cliche>The Real WTF is that the US allows roads to have 2 designations like that</hackneyed cliche> Though maybe having gaps like in the UK isn't much better.
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@Qwerty said:
I like the American system where it's possible to travel south on north road. You get signs like "Sth N Rd" or "North Road South." I first noticed this when it took an hour in a taxi to get from JFK Airport to my hotel that was 2 miles from the airport. The taxi driver was very apologetic and turned the meter off after the first 15 minutes driving in circles.
Chicago and New york Street systems work really well. if you're on 5th and main, and you want to get to 27th and main... you go 22 blocks north; etc.
In southern california, we have Huge streets that go through multiple cities. If you're lucky enough to have a street that doesn't change name 4 times (like the street near my house... Colima, La Mirada, Malvern, Chapman, Orangethorpe, End. and i think that it changes to ANOTHER name north of colima.
If you're lucky enough not to be on one of those, you have to deal with pre-industrial age naming and numbering conventions. down here, if something is on 5000 College Avenue, and you're at 4000 College avenue... you either have 10 blocks ahead of you to go, or around 50 blocks in the other direction. (your mileage may vary)
We have no rhyme or reason... Travelling north, the numbers SHOULD increase if you're on say, North Tustin street... But not always... travelling north on south tustin numbers decrease, then you pass 100 block of tustin... across the street there's another 100 block, and then the numbers start going up again. It's such a pain when you want to find a business in some city you've never been to before, and the directions given to you are like "go West on East Broadway st"... stupid stupid stupid.
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It happens all over the place. Sometimes, when an interstate needs to go around a mountain or other obstacle, it can be oriented in the opposite cardinal direction than signs might indicate. This gets extra confusing when a major artery crosses the highway at that point; entrance ramp direction signs don't seem to line up with respect to the "correctly" oriented cross road.
If you live in the area and are familiar with the roads it makes sense. But if you're just passing through and struggling with a fanfold map, you're SOL.
BTW, that stretch of 95 is right next to our sister campus in Bedford. Coincidence?
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As one drives toward Fort Lewis on I-5 southbound in Washington state, one encounters a sign which says:
Fort Lewis
No. Fort Lewis
I took a picture of this sign one day, intending to send it to Douglas Adams, but he died before I could get his contact information.
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@GeneWitch said:
We have no rhyme or reason... Travelling north, the numbers SHOULD increase if you're on say, North Tustin street... But not always... travelling north on south tustin numbers decrease, then you pass 100 block of tustin... across the street there's another 100 block, and then the numbers start going up again. It's such a pain when you want to find a business in some city you've never been to before, and the directions given to you are like "go West on East Broadway st"... stupid stupid stupid.
Traveling north on South Tustin, numbers SHOULD decrease until they reach the "logical zero" which is generally at or near the center of town, or a major intersection, or wherever the dividing line has been decreed to be. Then the numbers start increasing again. 100 N Tustin is north of 200 S Tustin; that's perfectly normal.
Going south on South Tustin, the numbers *should* increase, the farther away from the "logical center" you get. It's all done correctly; you just don't understand it.
In an unfamilar city, sure, you won't know where the logical dividing line is, but if you're on South Oak and you are looking for a smaller number than what you see, you go north; if you want a larger number than what you see, you go south. Numbers increase as you go away from the city center.
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@CDarklock said:
As one drives toward Fort Lewis on I-5 southbound in Washington state, one encounters a sign which says:
Fort Lewis
No. Fort Lewis
I took a picture of this sign one day, intending to send it to Douglas Adams, but he died before I could get his contact information.
There's a similar sign for White Plains, (and No White Plains) in New York.
Across the river there's
Nyack
So Nyack
Which always struck me as poetic.
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@Dragnslcr said:
There's a stretch of highway in Massachusetts where you're going south on I-95 and north on Route 3 at the same. The direction you're actually going in is west-southwest.
I got that beat. Here, on Fresh Pond Parkway, you can go north on Route 3, east on Route 16, and west on Route 2!
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@newfweiler said:
@Dragnslcr said:
There's a stretch of highway in Massachusetts where you're going south on I-95 and north on Route 3 at the same. The direction you're actually going in is west-southwest.
I got that beat. Here, on Fresh Pond Parkway, you can go north on Route 3, east on Route 16, and west on Route 2!
I got the Wikipedia article on wrong-way concurrency.
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@DWalker59 said:
@GeneWitch said:
We have no rhyme or reason... Travelling north, the numbers SHOULD increase if you're on say, North Tustin street... But not always... travelling north on south tustin numbers decrease, then you pass 100 block of tustin... across the street there's another 100 block, and then the numbers start going up again. It's such a pain when you want to find a business in some city you've never been to before, and the directions given to you are like "go West on East Broadway st"... stupid stupid stupid.
Traveling north on South Tustin, numbers SHOULD decrease until they reach the "logical zero" which is generally at or near the center of town, or a major intersection, or wherever the dividing line has been decreed to be. Then the numbers start increasing again. 100 N Tustin is north of 200 S Tustin; that's perfectly normal.
Going south on South Tustin, the numbers *should* increase, the farther away from the "logical center" you get. It's all done correctly; you just don't understand it.
In an unfamilar city, sure, you won't know where the logical dividing line is, but if you're on South Oak and you are looking for a smaller number than what you see, you go north; if you want a larger number than what you see, you go south. Numbers increase as you go away from the city center.
I understand, sir... I was trying to communicate the bi-directional numbering. it'd be better to just have one street name and the numbers start at zero on the south end. That is how highways and interstates are marked in california... exit 93 is 93 miles away from mexico, exit 657 is 657 miles from mexico. and when you're going south, it's the same (miles to mexico)
took a lot of guesswork and looking at Odo out when using mapquest or something similar (54 miles on i-5N... you got on at mile 50, exit 104 is your exit)
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At this point I'd like to say that signposts to places are better than signposts to 'directions' on bendy roads ... if I join the M1 as it curls around Leeds, I know I want 'Sheffield M1' if I want to go south, even though the road's east/west ish there and N/S don't make too much sense.
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And in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, the main street (King St.) runs in four directions: North, South, East, and West (East-West in Kitchener, North-South in Waterloo), despite being a fairly straight, continuous street.
Alice: "Where do you live?"
Bob: "110 King St."
Alice: "Would that be North, South, East, or West?"
King Street also intersects its "parallel" road, Weber Street, 3 times. "Meet me at King & Weber." "Uhh... which one?"
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@GeneWitch said:
I understand, sir... I was trying to communicate the bi-directional numbering. it'd be better to just have one street name and the numbers start at zero on the south end.
That would be easier, except that cities and towns generally grow outward. I don't think we'd want to have to renumber everything every couple of years in a fast-growing town.
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Talking about illogical street: I live on ... OK, I'm going to anonymize it a bit. I live at 100 South Rottie Street, Pinscher, Newf Hampshire.
Pinscher has a Rottie Street. There's a 100 Rottie Street. The street I live on used to be called Doberman Road but they renamed it South Rottie Street They couldn't call it Rottie Street because there already was a Rottie Street. Our letter carriers are a little bit lysdexic so I get letters meant for 100 Rottie Street and whoever lives there gets letters meant for me.
Making it worse, Pinscher Massachusetts is a much bigger and better-known city that also has a Rottie Street but fortunately no South Rottie Street. And since I work in Massachusetts everybody looks for me in that city.
Why does anyone ever bother making a South Something Street with the same addresses as Something Street? And the P.O. writes my address as "100 S Rottie Street" which could just as easily mean Apartment S, 100 Rottie Street.
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What about if they just don't know WTF to name things??
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Weirdly, this was playing on Pandora when I came across the image:
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@boomzilla I'm pretty sure this is
, probably in Funny Stuff, but a long time ago, so I'll allow it.
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@boomzilla Tim had better watch out...
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@dkf said in What the Sign?!??:
@boomzilla Tim had better watch out...
You're over a month too early with that, now I'm going to pout!
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